New Home For Preliminary Guild Of Writers

Robert The Rebuilder · **Posted:** Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:09 am

Below are the nominees for the new home of the preliminary Guild of Writers (as stated in this thread):

http://www.guildofwriters.com
http://www.writers-guild.org/ or http://www.writers-guild.net/

Please make your selection by voting in this poll. It will last for 7 days. At the end of that time, the site with the most votes is the new home site.

If there is a tie, we'll hold a run-off election for 3 days.

SCGreyWolf · **Posted:** Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:30 pm

I voted for the guildofwriters.com because it lacks Flash.

D'Lanor · **Posted:** Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:05 pm

I still want it to be on these MOUL forums. No more diaspora.

I don't like the way this guild thing is going. It should unite and not divide. As such am not planning to join any guild. Interested guilds can still acquire my services for a reasonable fee.

D'Lanor the Homeless

Tweek · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am **Posts:** 2633

SCGreyWolf wrote:

I voted for the guildofwriters.com because it lacks Flash.

<claps>

SCGreyWolf · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:45 am

D'Lanor wrote:

I still want it to be on these MOUL forums. No more diaspora.

I don't like the way this guild thing is going. It should unite and not divide. As such am not planning to join any guild. Interested guilds can still acquire my services for a reasonable fee.

D'Lanor the Homeless

You can share my cardboard box with me.

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

But what do you mean, "It should unite and not divide"? We are not sending these people away to Madagascar because they desire to form the Guild. We will not be disunited simply because there's another forum. And from the discussions I've seen, pretty much everyone in every guild wants the most open form of entry into the Guilds. If you are interested in the Guild, you may join. I hear that everywhere and hope to see people join.

As for Yet Another Forum (patent pending). Yes, it is another forum. Though not without its potential uses and not without its possibilities for unity.

Emor D'ni Lap · **Joined:** Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:15 am **Posts:** 584

SCGreyWolf wrote:

I voted for the guildofwriters.com because it lacks Flash.

GreyWolf, I put up a Flash page at http://www.writers-guild.org because it was just a placeholder, and thought a little animation'd be at least slightly entertaining for the single page it is. It was my first-ever attempt at Flash work.

The site itself will not be Flash-based.

You can change your vote now. :wink:

D'Lanor · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:20 pm

Whilyam wrote:

But what do you mean, "It should unite and not divide"? We are not sending these people away to Madagascar because they desire to form the Guild. We will not be disunited simply because there's another forum. And from the discussions I've seen, pretty much everyone in every guild wants the most open form of entry into the Guilds. If you are interested in the Guild, you may join. I hear that everywhere and hope to see people join.

As for Yet Another Forum (patent pending). Yes, it is another forum. Though not without its potential uses and not without its possibilities for unity.

There was a vote before this vote and most people voted for this forum. Then somehow that decision was turned into a temporary one. That is a well known technique to force ideas down everybody's throat while at the same time keeping up a democratic pretense.

I do agree that the current setup of this forum does not work. Cyan dropped the ball and decided to give the guilds just a single section instead of a separate subforum with sections for each guild. That was a major mistake.

I want the guild forums to be under Cyan's control. I have seen too much things* happen on forums run by fans.

Mode note:
*Replaced word.
Remember this is a familyfriendly forum.
Veralun 09/26/07

semplerfi · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2007 2:00 pm

D'Lanor wrote:

I want the guild forums to be under Cyan's control. I have seen too much things* happen on forums run by fans.

^ What D'anor said. I concur.
|

Tweek · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 12:11 am **Posts:** 2633

Family forums yo.

I think guild sites hosted by Cyan would be the way to go for those who are worried about "power grabbing" and other such things.

Perhaps a community body elected or something to over see that the Guilds don't become what so many fear, course then who watches the watchers?

Whilyam · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 1:04 am **Posts:** 4134

D'Lanor wrote:

There was a vote before this vote and most people voted for this forum. Then somehow that decision was turned into a temporary one. That is a well known technique to force ideas down everybody's throat while at the same time keeping up a democratic pretense.

Wasn't that a vote on whether the Writers would use the AoG forums vs. these? I highly doubt that anyone on the writers group is trying to force anything down people's throats as they're all very nice people. The most arrogant thing I think we've done is internally rolled our eyes at the people screaming "We'll get gahrohevtee-based age creation tools!!!!!" and told them that's impossible.

I'm joining the group or pre-guild or whatever that seems the most open, and push it to be more open. I think the sites are needed not only for internal guild conversations, but so we can at least try and see just how many are interested in this. But this is just my opinion and if people make restrictive groups regardless, we'll eventually pay for it. I see little of that in any of the guilds, though.

belford · **Joined:** Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:01 pm **Posts:** 1890

My only problem with Cyan-run forums is flexibility. Obviously we need subforums. And a lot of the GoW planning has talked about a private forum for working on Ages, or even one forum per Age project. That requires creating forums on the fly, which requires a fast and responsive forum adminstrator. Cyan, historically, is not that.

I know that fan-run sites are subject to political explosions and collapses... but then, so are Cyan's ideas, right?

...I kind of want to say, if we can't hold a web forum together like approximate grownups, we have no hope of holding a Guild together.

I think there are pragmatic steps we can take to limit the political risks. Mostly: decentralize power. Make sure that "forum administrator" does not mean "high lord arbiter of the Guild." Make sure that whoever tends the wiki is not in charge of deciding what Ages the Guild is working on. Ensure that Guild outsiders are fully able to work on Ages on their own. If there's less power in the Guild, there will be fewer power grabs.

belford · **Joined:** Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:01 pm **Posts:** 1890

Here's a crazy idea: outside moderators.

What if we went to the Guild of Messengers and said, hey, help us keep our (fan-site) forums sane? That's a service in the communications domain. The Messengers could act as neutral admins on any forum (where they were wanted). Volunteers from GoMe wouldn't be directly involved in any Writers arguments. (Well, they'd be as uninvolved as any Uru player could be!)

Obviously, they'd have to agree to the confidentiality rules of any non-public forums.

It's not a classical governmental check-and-balance, because there'd still be a site administrator who owns the machine. But hopefully it would give the admin some breathing space. He'd have a better chance to stay back and say "Dude, I just manage the site" if he didn't have to intervene in every squabble.

(The only flaw in this idea is that I don't know who would moderate the Messengers *own* forums! :-)

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:23 pm

Cross-moderation, sort of like Scissors / paper / stone (or 'heek if you like

)?

Ian Atrus · **Posted:** Wed Sep 26, 2007 11:59 pm

Personally, not talking as a mod or anything, I think discussions about a guild can very well stay here until that guild actually exists, for the simple fact that there's more people and more opinions here than on any other YetAnotherGroupForum.

Some say "another forum is not a big deal, those interested will join up"; but it is: at this stage we should not close ourselves in little groups of interested people, but try to get the opinions of as much persons as possible, especially those who won't join up another forum, to listen to the 'customers' about what they want the Guilds to do - and then find out how to do it, with them. If this will mean listening to the infinite complainers too, and to those like me who dabble in all the discussions without joining any particular guild, well, that's the price to pay for working in the social.

Guild talk can get private once there's a structure up and you don't want just anybody to come in and demand to restructure the Guild from head to toes.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare to have organized Guild sites and forums when the time comes, but that day is still months/years away. It doesn't need to be done today.

New Home For Preliminary Guild Of Writers

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